


Still and Slow

by buckysbears (DrZebra)



Series: Disability December 2017 [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Character, Autistic Elena, F/M, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/pseuds/buckysbears
Summary: Elena tells Mack she's autistic, and the conversation doesn't go how she planned.





	Still and Slow

**Author's Note:**

> for aosficnet's disability december 
> 
> prompt asked for elena telling mack she's autistic 
> 
> this is my first time writing yoyomack so any feedback is appreciated <3 i hope i wrote them right

Elena slowly examines Mack’s hands. They’re much bigger than her own, broad, steady, dependable. She lets her fingers trail over the dark lines on his palm, rubs the pad of her thumb over his calluses. It’s a quiet moment. Those are her favorite moments with him: the quiet, the still, the slow. She’s known for moving fast, but she doesn’t like to all the time. Just lying there with him and feeling the beating of his heart is enough for her at moments like this. It feels like there’s nothing that needs to be said.

Of course, there is. And she’s nervous. She doesn’t get nervous about a lot of things, but this one has her on edge. She trusts Mack, she trusts him with anything, but he’ll be the first person she’s told, and she wants to get this right.

She lets his hand, clasped between her own, fall to her stomach. She lets out a short, anxious sigh.  

“What’s up?” Mack asks in a low grumble, always perceptive.

“I was talking to Jemma and Fitz earlier,” she starts, and gives his hand a squeeze. She turns to look at him, his face almost blurred with how close it is. “I think I’m autistic.”

For a moment there’s no reaction, then his eyebrows draw together. “What?”

She nods, pulling back so she can see him better. “We were talking about our childhoods. I was telling them about Colombia, and my family, and my studies. They were telling me about themselves as children and … something clicked. I think it fits me.”

He surprises her by sitting up, and she leans up on her elbows as he scratches at the back of his head, not facing her.

“Mack?” she asks.

“I just …” He gives a shrug. “I don’t know a lot about this, I’ll admit that freely, but … I don’t really see it in you.”

A million things fly through her head, but the extra second it takes her to translate any one thought into English gives him time to continue. He turns to face her on the bed.

“I mean, Fitz and Jemma are … You know I love them. I think they’re amazing. But they’re a little weird, you know? And I love that about them, that makes them who they are. They aren’t ashamed to be different. But they _are_ different from most people. And I guess I never thought of you that way.”

Elena sits up as well, brows furrowed and not sure what to say. She gets out of the bed and pulls her robe on over her pajamas, because suddenly the air has taken on a chill for her. She looks at the photo of the two of them that sits on his dresser, then turns back to him.

“I _am_ though, Mack. I’m different. And not just because I go fast.” She expects him to smile at this, but he doesn’t. “And I think you don’t see it because … because I didn’t want you to see it. I wanted you to see me in a … um—” She flicks her hand toward her face from above. “A light,” she remembers. “I wanted you to see me from a certain light. I’m not ashamed of who I am. You know that. But certain things you show to people, and certain things you don’t, and I was taught not to show some things. Not to act in ways. And that changed me, but that doesn’t mean that deep down that’s not still who I am.”

Mack shrugs. “And maybe that’s true. I’m just saying, you’ve never shown that to me. All I know is what I see from others, and I know that you don’t act like them.”

“Well we’re all—” She means for the sentence to have a punch to it, because of the little flare of anger this conversation has stirred up in her gut, but she can’t remember the word for what she wants to say. She huffs a frustrated breath, hands coming to rest on her sides. “Round?” she comes up with.

“Round?” Mack’s face screws up in confusion. “Well-rounded?”

“Oh.” She rubs at the bridge of her nose. “No. No, um …” She lets out a little growl. “You know what I mean!”

His lips thin, and he shakes his head, looking apologetic.

There’s a few beats of silence as she thinks.

“Diverse!” she almost shouts, the word finally coming to her. “We’re diverse. Autistic people are, just as much as anybody else. There are things that unite us, but we can be just as different as anyone else. You’re not the same as … as May. Or Hunter. People aren’t all the same.”

“Okay,” Mack says, holding up his hands. “That’s a fair point.”

Elena presses her lips together, looking down at the floor. “I just … need you to be on my team, Mack.”

“I am. Always. You know that.”

“Then I need you to accept this.”

When she looks back up, he’s not looking at her. She wants him to look at her, even if his gaze rattles as much as soothes her.

“I think …” He rubs a hand over his mouth. “I think I’m just a little concerned.”

It feels like a spike to the chest, but she swallows it down and asks, “About what?”

“That this means I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”

She walks over to the bed, sits before him, and gathers up his hand again. She can see him watching their hands just as she is, studying the differences in tone in their tangled fingers. “You do. You do know me.” She waits for him to look up at her. “That person I show everyone, that’s still me. It’s not fake. That person is me, and you know that person really well. But there are … parts of myself. Parts that I have like anyone else, the parts that you don’t show. And I haven’t let you get to know those parts, and maybe that’s my fault. But I want to. I want you to know all of me.”

Mack’s warm brown eyes examine her face. “I want to know all of you, too.”

She meets his gaze. There’s a flood of something in her chest, an energy and burst of feeling that she doesn’t know a name for in any language. “This is part of me, Mack. This is who I am. And I need you to accept that.”

He nods slightly. “Okay.” His eyes drop, and she follows them down to their hands as he lifts hers and places a kiss on her knuckles. “Okay, Yoyo. If this is a part of you, then it’s a part I love and accept. I’ll learn more. About this, about you. I’ll work on it.”

A smile curls at her lips. “That’s all I ask.”

He gives a little sigh and smiles as well, and lets her fingers rest against his cheek. “You know, I don’t think they ever cleared out Bobbi’s wine stash. How about we skip the whole sleeping thing, and we can have a drink and just talk for a while?”

Elena nods. “That sounds nice.”

Mack presses another kiss to the back of her hand, and then stands and pulls on a shirt. Elena stands and edges toward the door, a smirk pulling at her lips.

“Race you,” she says, and then pulls the door open and shoots out of the room.

As she makes her way down the hall she hears Mack’s shout of, “You don’t even know where the stash is!” and then laughter. Elena laughs as well, and the sound echoes through the quiet halls.


End file.
